The time has come to reflect on achievements, gaps and new challenges as the world approaches the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline year, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at Headquarters today.

The number of international migrants worldwide had reached 232 million in 2013, up from 175 million in 2000 and 154 million in 1990, United Nations officials said at a Headquarters press conference today, stressing the importance of accurate, timely and unbiased research for evidence-based policy making.

The Commission of Inquiry dealing with human rights violations in Syria issued its latest report today, in which it says that civilians continue to pay the price for the failure to negotiate an end to this conflict. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost and more than 6 million Syrians have fled their homes.

Education, economic empowerment, and reproductive rights were three key building blocks for eliminating poverty and achieving women’s emancipation, the new head of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) told reporters in New York today.

In consultations this morning, the Security Council is expected to be briefed on the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Mary Robinson, the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa, and Martin Kobler, the head of the UN Mission in that country. Later, members will meet formally on Somalia.

Hervé Ladsous, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told correspondents today that even though the world’s attention was currently focused on Syria — and rightly so — many of his Department’s concerns today had to do with various situations in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and Sudan and South Sudan.

The General Assembly would convene its sixty-eighth session on 17 September with more than 130 Heads of State and Government expected to address the 193-nation body from 24 September to 1 October, a senior United Nations conference management official said at a Headquarters press conference today.

The Secretary-General yesterday said he was informed by the Syrian Government that Syria’s President has signed the legislative decree providing for Syria’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Authorities expressed their commitment to observe the Convention even before its entry into force for Syria.

Acknowledging attempts by many of his predecessors to move Security Council reform forward, the new President of the General Assembly said today that he would work for consensus on what that reform should look like.

While significant gains had been made since the historic World Conference on Human Rights — held in Vienna, Austria, in 1993 — more was urgently needed to fully realize those rights for millions of people around the world, a top United Nations official said today at a Headquarters press conference, spotlighting an upcoming event to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Vienna Conference.